The Prophet's Ladder (7 page)

“Hey, boss. Want to grab a drink with us?” Todd looked over his shoulder as he slid his computer into a briefcase. It was John Bolivar, the only other American on the team. He had come from Alcaeus Space Systems, a robotics technician much like himself, and was one of the highest paid members of the project team, given his experience and background. Thirty-five and educated at Stanford and MIT according to his bio sheet. Parents were from immigrants from Colombia, and had settled in the San Fernando Valley.

“Thanks, John. Nah, I have to get back to Anne. She’s off to lecture at the city university for two weeks starting tomorrow, this is our last night at home together for a bit.”

“Absolutely understand. Say hello for me! I look forward to meeting her sometime. Maybe coffee or lunch with me and the wife?” John smiled. Tanned with pearly white teeth and fashionably unkempt dark hair, his complexion was as well suited to the Arabian Peninsula as it was to sunny Southern California.

“Sure thing, John. See you tomorrow.” Todd slipped out of the conference room and headed downstairs, waving his security badge at the guard at the front desk. He’d biked to work today, before the sun had risen and the desert had gotten too hot. Al-Hatem had been good enough to install bike lanes on all their highways from the work complex to the company village. Now the sun was setting, a ruddy red ball on the horizon, heat waves obscuring any distinct scenery, warping its visage like the static waves on an old television set. As he pedaled his thoughts drifted over the day’s work. It had been two months already and the team was coming together, overcoming any cultural or linguistic barriers through sheer determination and drive; the project they were working on was something the world had never seen before and they all knew it. If it were successful, and to Todd’s mind that was a big
if,
Al-Hatem Aerospace would reduce the cost of transporting materials to space by a factor of a thousand or more. It would enable humankind to construct larger orbiting stations or assemble space-going vessels that would dwarf any previous interplanetary probes. Asteroid mining for rare metals and other elements would become economically feasible. Moon colonies, all that crazy stuff that Hollywood had assumed would be commonplace in the twenty-first century could actually come true.
It would make NASA’s old business model obsolete,
Todd thought. Every spaceport, every commercial satellite launching venture would either have to step up and build their own elevator or figure out some other way to drastically reduce the cost per kilogram of shipping things into orbit, or else….

And Al-Hatem and, by proximity, the UAE would be at the center of it all. The Arab-speaking world would be at the forefront of technological innovation and progress.
It would blow every American’s mind
,
that’s for sure.
Todd considered all the hatred and vitriol he had observed in the U.S. immediately following the horrific tragedy of 9/11 and during the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Misspent and misdirected rage had destroyed Arab-Americans’ homes and businesses, had driven paranoia levels and the U.S. security state’s overreach to an all-time high. Was the Arab world and, by extension, the rest of the planet ready for such a shift in perception? Todd wasn’t sure.
I suppose Al-Hatem Aerospace has to succeed first.
The company’s rocket launch he had witnessed previously was impressive, but it was in part both a cover for the corporation's true mission and also a fallback plan, were the elevator not to function as designed.

Todd had been briefed on how he and his fellow expat co-workers were to interact with host country nationals. Many UAE citizens were Wahabists, a conservative sect of Sunni Islam, and some—though not all—wouldn’t approve of their work or even their living in the country. All that besides, their work was to be considered classified to the highest degree. Each Al-Hatem employee working on his team had had his or her background checked and vetted thoroughly before being granted clearance to work on the
Solifuges
project, and his team wasn’t even working with the top secret engineering teams. They were based in another compound where the elevator car, the tether, and its launch mechanism were being designed and constructed.

Perhaps they’re isolating us, each team, so that we won’t know anything comprehensively should our work be compromised?
It was a sobering thought. He hated all this black ops industrial espionage malarkey whenever it came up.  Any corporate bureaucracy was difficult enough to navigate without there being trade secrets involved. Still, he could understand why this work in particular must remain hidden from the public eye, especially here in the UAE.

Fifty minutes and a bottle of water later, Todd and Anne were strolling through the park Al-Hatem aerospace had built for its employees in the center of their planned community. It was built around an old oasis: date palms stretched upwards, their tanned, lanky trunks curving ever so slightly eastward against the prevailing desert winds. Each tree was topped with a busy mop of dates and fronds. It was a brightly lit evening, with the moon almost full, its glassy white features starkly visible to those terrestrial observers. Even so, solar powered streetlights lit the path ahead of them. The paved pathway they followed formed a circular loop around the oasis that fed back onto itself, a veritable Oroboros. Other couples, families, and young teenagers strolled in the park or sat by the water’s edge on the green grass, skipping stones or laughing heartily. Many of the women wore the hijab covering out of respect for the indigenous culture, as Anne did. Others did not, some westerners even opting for shorts or tank tops.

“So, how did it go today?” Anne inquired. Her face seemed more distinct in the moonlight, framed by cloth and not her usual shoulder-length auburn hair.

“Pretty well. I think the team is really starting to cohere. The language barrier thing wasn’t really an issue to begin with. I think it was just folks acclimating to the diversity of accents in the room,” Todd replied, swallowing a pinch of sunflower seeds from his hand.

“That’s great.”

“Yeah. And the
Solifuge
is really a fun project. The designs improving the adhesive rollers and the grasping arms specs coming from Olle and Heike are spot on. It’s really all coming together. Still…”

“Still what?” Anne tilted her head at Todd, an inquiring countenance.

“Still, the funding for all of this...I can’t wrap my head around it. It’s public, it’s private, it’s coming from foreign investors, but also it seems there are a few shell corporations? I know accounting isn’t my bailiwick, but I’d still like to know whose dollars we’re running on, or petrodollars for that matter. It was easier at NASA when I knew it was the U.S taxpayer footing the bill.”

“Can you ask the sheikh?”

Todd nodded. “I could. I’m still supposed to visit his estate to go hawking with him this weekend, but I don’t want to be rude. From what I understand it is inappropriate to talk business like that during recreation here.” Anne and Todd walked on past a few North American kids showing an Indian boy their own age how to nosegrind on a skateboard.

“And the other thing is...some of this tech, Anne, I mean wow. Where are they getting this stuff? It’s impressive.”

Anne was silent, choosing to let Todd vent his confusion over his new workplace.

“Anyways, it’ll be fine. It’s just all very exciting and new. Are you all packed for your lecture tour?”
Anne smiled. “ Yep. It’s a three-hour drive to Abu Dhabi tomorrow morning. I’ll call you once I’m settled at the residency apartment.”

“Sounds good! You excited?” Todd rubbed her shoulder, unsure if it was an unseemly thing to do in public here.

“Yep! Lecturing about North American desert macroflora is always a thrilling adventure. Cacti here we come!” Anne laughed, her self-deprecating manner getting the better of her as it usually did.

“Well, I’m just glad we both found something useful to do out here.”

“Me too. Ready to head back? Samam made that stew you like.”

“Mmmm-mmm!” Todd’s mouth watered instantly. Samam had turned out to be an excellent cook, in addition to being a universally delightful person to be around. She was quickly becoming part of the family, for which, especially due to her culinary talents and housekeeping rigor, Todd and Anne were particularly thankful. The couple steered themselves around the rest of the park circuit and walked the block to their apartment tower, passing a host of other couples and families out and about. The planned community was a bustling one, even at this hour. It seemed near utopian despite the multitude of cultures, languages, and customs present. Todd had often wondered, seeing similar sights on previous occasions, if the unifying force here was their respective employer or something else, something deeper: the high level of education amongst the families? The secrecy and the hope of the project? It was hard to say. All he knew for sure was that he was starving for that stew. Overhead, a meteor flashed brilliantly in the night sky west of the moon, seemingly unnoticed, winking out at its zenith.

Chapter 5

14th Century Tangier, Morocco

“Are you ready to depart, master?” the servant inquired politely, continuing to strap sandalwood boxes of scrolls and books detailing matters of jurisprudence onto the dromedary that stood before him. The beast, a huge creature of some girth and age was unconcernedly chewing cud, indifferent to the weight of the supplies that were being attached to his bulk. A young man, twenty-two years of age, with a black, neatly combed beard, bearing the look of a man of station of the city of Tangier, nodded in reply. His eyes surveyed the small train of three camels that stretched behind him. He would be departing alone from the city, without even his family servants, intending to meet up with—and perhaps accompany— others on the long journey ahead.

“Yes, my friend, I am ready.
Bismillah
! We go on Hajj! It is a glorious day.” The young man chose to lead his camels by foot through the outer gates of the city, thinking it wise to adopt a humble appearance when departing for Mecca, that distant, holy realm. It was a great pilgrimage, a glorious undertaking that only those of some wealth or position could afford in this land of the Marinids, so far from the epicenter of the
Dar Al-Islam.

Abū ʿAbd al-Lāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Lāh l-Lawātī ṭ-Ṭanǧī ibn Battuta
walked for some hours along the main thoroughfare that led south by southeast from the city, the sea breeze gently brushing his hair from behind, washing him, blessing him with the scents of salt and fruit trees that were the joys and treasures of his homeland.
I shall miss my parents most dearly
, the young man thought,
but this is something I must do.
He encountered no others who were traveling on Hajj along the highway, which dismayed him only slightly. On his route Ibn Battuta passed Arab traders heading into the city, trailing caravans of spices, silver, and gold from the African interior, their escorts Tuareg nomads wrapped in blue cloth or dark skinned Gnawa who had sheathed their weaponry so close to civilization, preferring to sing as they traveled, strumming exotic stringed instruments that buzzed, pitched, and clamored delightfully. There in Tangier, the city of his birth, the merchants would sell their wares at the docks to Genoans, Venetians, Turks, and others: a multitude of peoples who had sailed from across the seas to partake of the wealth of the Maghreb.

Eventually settling down in a small roadside clearing wherein other traders had previously made camp, Ibn Battuta chose to write down his thoughts before supper.

I set out by myself, having no comrades to cheer the way with friendly conversation. Nor did I encounter any solitary sightseers with whom I could travel. Influenced by an overmastering urge and a long-cherished desire to visit those glorious havens, I have committed to leave behind, for a while, all my friends and my home. With a heavy heart I bade farewell to my parents; I feel a great sadness as I leave home at last.

His meal consisted of tangerines and bread dipped in olive oil, a simple repast. He let the camels graze on the green brush that rimmed the clearing. He would light no fire, for the evening was warm and dry, perfect for stargazing. He thought of his schoolmates and the trifling, philosophical matters they’d debated on past evenings such as this one. They were good friends, synchronously wise and foolish in matters of the heart and mind. Ibn Battuta thought too of his mother, who had wept when he announced his intention to go on Hajj, though whether she’d shed tears of joy at his piety or from fear at his departure, he couldn’t tell. His father had merely nodded in approval, and had granted him the funds necessary for the trip. He admired his father, a wise legal scholar, an
Ulama
of some renown, though he was not an affectionate man like his son. He recalled the one extensive trip they had taken together, into the south, where as a young boy he’d listened to a sightless Berber recount an incredible tale of djinn and the heroes of a past age.

Eventually, his mind was drawn back to the journey ahead.
Sixteen months. The journey shall take sixteen months. That is not so great a length of time. And I shall see all that this world has to offer, Inshallah.

Ibn Battuta the scholar, a serious, devout, youthful man of Tangier would not see his home again for twenty-four years.

****

What do we have to fear from change? Nothing. We hold the Quran as the unalterable word of the Compassionate One, yet our scholars have hidden the truth: that it has evolved, like every ancient work. It has been interpreted and revised and altered. We condemn the western scholars for their historiography, for their evolutionary linguistics, and yet we do not have the courage to remove the rose tinted glasses with which we view our supposed golden age and review our accomplishments with a critical eye. God commands us “Read! In the name of thy Lord who createth!” Yet we do not. We dilly-dally and prevaricate. I say to you that the Faithful must understand that the Quran is a living document; it breathes, it changes through the epochs, and that this is a holy act, just as reading its words with true intention is holy. The ‘Satanic verses’, the absence of consonant pointing, these issues must be fully understood by the people before we can move forward, before we can heal from the recent uprising. The two issues, that of our ‘Arab Spring’ and that of our estimable Quran are not separate. Rather, they are inseparable.

It was mid afternoon by the time Ali finished his writing in the library.  He had begun to appreciate his daily routine now that his blog had become popular. Routine was of some use to him; it allowed him to set a work schedule and to keep it. It was always ‘publish or perish’ no matter if you were writing for a newspaper, academia, or for oneself. Ali had also begun tutoring a small class of primary school students at the library for some extra money, and he was expecting them shortly. Amina was on vacation in Italy with her parents for several weeks; a luxury Ali could barely begin to comprehend, let alone afford. Rome, Milan, Venice, they were only across a tiny spit of the Mediterranean, yet they might as well have been on Neptune for he and his family. It was no easy thing, getting a Tunisian passport, even now.

Later, as Ali tutored the four young boys in Arabic grammar his mind wandered to a dispatch he had received earlier in the day. A French newspaper,
Record de l'Atlantique,
had apparently seen the news broadcast and had contacted him via his website; the paper requested he write a series of op-ed pieces on the state of North African society for its readers. This was a tremendous opportunity for Ali, but it didn’t entirely sit well with him. He would be writing in French for a primarily European audience, but about his own people, his own culture. He would be an embedded reporter in his hometown, as it were, and he could choose if he wished to publish the pieces under a
nom de plum
. Was this a means to effect true change? Or was it a medal to pin on his jacket, a matter of prestige and pride? The
Record
had given him a week to consider their offer, and Ali believed he would have to spend much of that time mulling it over.

“Yes, excellent, my friends. Now the third accent goes here…” he illustrated the proper spelling of the word from their lesson book, the boys diligently taking notes. His mother would be expecting him for dinner in forty minutes. She couldn’t cook in the kitchen like she used to, given her condition, so he would be making lentils and chicken, a cheap, easy, healthy meal.
They
are
offering a lot of money; I could better support mom, get her the real medicine and care that she needs.
The lesson was almost over, and his students looked rather bored and tired. They’d already suffered through eight hours of school, in addition to his tutelage, and he could tell that they’d reached their limits for the evening.

“That’s all for tonight, guys. Good job. Tell your parents I’ll see you next Tuesday. Head on home.” The formerly exhausted students suddenly bolted upright with energy, sliding their books and papers into backpacks half their size before scampering off, screaming and yelling. A grumpy woman looked up from the stacks in the adjoining room and frowned at Ali and the boys. Ali slunk away, also feeling a renewed sense of energy.
Maybe I will take that offer, write under a pseudonym. It would be nice to save some money for when Amina and I get married, after all.
The walk back to his house in the old medina went by quickly, stopping only to pick up the chicken, its carcass warm and freshly plucked by a jovial, fat butcher. The man had laughed in his blood stained apron, handing Ali the dead bird in a plastic shopping bag. Behind him his assistant was running another chicken through an intricate defeatherer that resembled a washing machine with spinning hooks. “Too many feathers! I should sell pillows! Haha!” Ali smiled back and paid the butcher his coin.

He could tell something was wrong as soon as he turned the corner; the family home’s front door was slightly ajar, and the alleyway was strangely deserted. Even at this hour there should’ve been a mendicant or a food cart vendor selling grilled corn or escargot soup, but the narrow cobblestone way was cold and silent. A sinking feeling in his stomach, Ali nervously pushed the door open. “Hello? Mother? Dad? Why is the door open? I brought dinner…”

A heavy wooden stock slammed into Ali’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him, instantly bringing him to his knees. He gasped for air but was unable to breathe, an absurd amount of pain coursing through his body. Ali tried to lift his head to see who had struck him, but he could not bring himself to move; only several pairs of green military fatigues and black boots were visible from his crippled vantage.  Another swift blow cracked the back of his skull, and consciousness began to slip away. The last thing Ali heard before the blackness overwhelmed him was his mother’s sickly voice, screaming.

He briefly regained consciousness for a few moments, and noted that a burlap sack, one that smelled of vegetable matter, had been tied tightly over his head. His hands were bound behind his back, and he was seated in a moving vehicle that was driving quickly over rough terrain, the axles creaking, tires bouncing over and over again unpleasantly. His mind reeled, unable to make sense of what was happening.

                                                                                    ****
      Ali awoke again, hours or days later, he couldn’t tell. His arms were still bound behind his back with what felt like thick hemp rope, though the sack that had been tied over his head was now gone, and he could see, despite his swollen and severely bruised face, his surroundings. So far as he could tell, he was in a dimly lit warehouse, a spacious cavern of a room filled with stacked rows of military-grade equipment and supplies. Wooden and plastic crates labeled in Arabic, Russian, English, and Chinese lined the walls, a single incandescent bulb swinging from rafters far above him. The cold concrete floor on which he rested had a bolt driven deep into its foundation, his legs shackled to the loop at its head. He senses were unable to discern if it was day or night, though the room was cold enough to make him wonder if he was underground or even up in the mountains.

A large man sat hunched on a wooden pallet opposite him smoking a pungent cigarette, the features of his face obscured by a grey
rzzza
headwrap and the shadows of the room. He wore an ancient green military jacket over khakis fatigues. The black combat boots looked familiar, Ali’s gut clenching in remembered pain when he looked at them. Ali, his mind ever observant even in his injured state, noted that the man was unarmed but for a long, serrated combat knife tucked into a leather belt at his hip. The blade was blackened metal except its edge, which had been recently sharpened; the man looked as though he was intimately familiar with the weapon’s qualities and care. With a lackadaisical, carefree slowness, the kidnapper looked up at him, having heard the stirring on the floor.

“You look like camel shit, dog.” The man laughed, his lips curling around the edges of his cigarette. Ali was too frightened to come up with a scathing retort, though he noted that the man spoke Arabic with an Algerian accent. Instead, in an attempt to remain in control of his already shattered nerves, he began fishing for information that could aid in his escape.

“Who...who are you? Where am I? Why have you beaten and kidnapped me?”

The man snorted. “Who are we? We are your death boy. You have offended God, and so we will bring about your destruction.”

“How have I offended God? I haven’t done anything! I’m a journalist!” Ali was distraught at the mention of his possible death. The man in the military fatigues stood up and stepped toward him, unsheathing his knife as he did so in one practiced, easy motion.

“We know who you are boy. We know what you’ve written.”

Ali’s stomach twisted again, and he almost threw up, though he knew he hadn’t eaten anything in a long while. “I don’t know what you’re talking abou…” The man slapped him hard across his face, his left cheek stinging sharply with the blow.

“Don’t lie. Don’t lie to us. You sit upon the precipice of the hereafter, on God’s holy doorstep, and you lie to us, His servants on Earth! How dare you.” The man grabbed Ali by his matted hair and began tracing lines into his exposed neck with the tip of his knife. Despite a lack of pressure the blade was so sharp it drew a small trickle of blood, which Ali felt roll down his shoulder and soak into his shirt. “Confess. Confess and we will make it easy for you.”